


An eye for an eye

by Depths



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mental Breakdown, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, lmk if I missed a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28783323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Depths/pseuds/Depths
Summary: Sunny told the truth. He did it. It's over.It doesn't matter what happens now–– he only has one more place to go.(another obligatory how everyone reacted to the truth fic, compliant with the true good ending)
Relationships: Aubrey & Hero & Kel & Sunny (OMORI)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 314





	An eye for an eye

In the end… It was surprisingly easy. So much suffering to get where he was now, so many walls and canyons between him and the truth, between him and his friends, and yet. It was as if all those years of upwelling darkness slivered out of him, water off of duck feathers. It oozed out of his mouth and seeped into the lines between the tiles under his bare feet. 

(The sound of her body thumping dully against the wood base of the stairs. hair sticky and uncomfortable where it grazed his arms, his neck. The light weight in his arms.)

He had only been twelve, but what did that matter?

(He hadn't meant to, hadn't wanted to, but what could that change?)

The first answer Sunny received was silence.

He was fine with that. Answers weren't important by that point–– not for him. Not anymore. Sunny figured that was just what had separated them all after all this time... they reached for answers; he reached for an end. 

Basil slept peacefully, unaware, behind them. He would wake up with friends if he was lucky. Maybe he'd be upset that Sunny hadn't tried to lie again. Maybe he would have wanted Sunny to wait until they could talk about it first. 

It didn't matter now. 

None of them had spoken yet. It was as if everyone was frozen in time... the only sign that his friends were alive at all were the shallow movement of Kel's chest and the tears welling up in Aubrey's eyes. Hero wasn't even breathing. 

But they would. They would be fine. They had each other again, in whatever ways that meant now–– 

(It wasn't as if they had killed anyone.)

What was done was done. Sunny turned to leave. He hadn't been to the hospital in a very long time but it should be simple enough to find the stairs. He just had to keep walking. Find a sign, follow the sign... It was all going to be over soon.

He barely heard the footsteps in time to turn.

A fist buried itself into his cheek. Sunny choked out a gasp and fell heavily, teeth clacking together painfully when the back of his skull bounced off the floor. Trying to instantly squeeze his eyes shut was agony even through all the painkillers he was on. It buzzed like hot white noise behind his eyes, crippling, all-consuming––

Another hit. His head whipped to the side. Sunny vaguely registered the cold of the floor as his cheek bounced off of it. The world tilted and turned sickeningly, eye feeling as if they were rolling freely in his head.

"How dare you," Hero choked out over the fuzz. 

Sunny's head dizzily wobbled back and forth as hands fisted in the front of his hospital gown, yanking his shoulders off the floor.

Hero's face, through his clearing vision, was twisted in desperate anger. Hot tears hit Sunny's face, soaking into his bandages. 

_"How dare you,"_ Hero repeated. "How _could_ you, How could––" He choked on nothing and everything. The fingers twisted into Sunny's clothes trembled violently. Sunny grit his teeth against the white noise screaming in his head as Hero shook him roughly, knocking him repeatedly against the tiles. "She was your _sister,"_ Hero yelled. "She–– Mari _loved_ you!"

_I know. I know. I know._

Sunny hiccuped shamefully as his good eye blurred with water.

(I love her too.)

Hero let go and Sunny fell like a doll with its string cut. He flopped limply against the floor, trying in vain to breathe through the dizzying sickness rising in his throat. Everything was spinning. The nausea from before, from medications, from not eating, from walking, from pain, from being jostled, from–– One of Hero's palms slammed into the floor beside his head. The other raised in a shaking fist. Knees beside his hips. He couldn't run away even if he wanted to. His hands, pale and small, remained lax and unmoving at his sides.

Sunny couldn't see anything beyond Hero. The edges of his vision were swimming in darkness. He felt like he was sinking the longer he tried to stare, further fuzzing the boundaries with every useless blink. He could barely even feel the lingering pain in his left cheek, though he was sure it was already darkly mottling his skin.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter. He was a walking corpse, rotting away in his paper-skinned porcelain body.

(Will this help you?)

He closed his eye and waited to be hit.

 _“Y-you––!”_ Hero choked out a strangled cry. 

A slamming bang to his left. The sound of something snapping sickly. Sunny flinched as the noise roared in his ears. Shutting his eye had only seemed to make him even dizzier. The world continued to spin even if he couldn't see it.

Shaky panting.

Nothing was happening.

Sunny opened his eye, frowning.

Hero just stared at him. Stared with an expression so horrified, so distraught. Stared as if he wasn't sure how to do anything else.

Behind him, Sunny finally registered the buzzing in his ears as screaming.

"––o _ff him!_ _Hero_ , y-you, you have to _stop,_ you have to get––" Kel yanked uselessly at Hero, trembling hands pulling at his shoulders, at his arms. Somewhere behind him, Aubrey's low, keening cry filled the room in a constant, unending backdrop.

Hero stared at him as if he couldn't hear a single word out of Kel's mouth. As if the sweaty hands trying in vain to pull him away from Sunny were nothing but a breeze against his back.

The world tilted on its axis.

Sunny blinked, head lolling weakly forward as everything settled back into place, surrounded by warmth.

Hero was gone, Hero was–– Hero held him, arms almost painfully tight around Sunny's thin shoulders. His chin stabbed into the hollow between Sunny's neck and shoulder. Sunny could only stare straight forward. He wasn't sure what else was left to do. Kel had gone silent and he finally had a clear view of his old friend's face, sickly pallid with fear. Kel stared back at him, equally frozen in time.

"You look just like her," Hero whispered, fragile and broken, and Sunny jerked as time restarted. "It’s like her funeral all over again, like walking up to that–– that fucking _casket_ and looking down and having to..." He sobbed quietly. Sunny's mouth fell open as soft, spiky (familiar) hair buried into his shoulder.

Everything was so quiet. Blissfully, horrifically quiet, broken only by Hero's sniffling and Aubrey's hiccups.

"You were only _twelve,"_ Hero choked out. "But Mari is _dead._ This isn't–– this isn't _fair._ _It still hurts so much."_

"Hero," Kel whispered, voice fragile as paper-thin glass.

It seemed to do something. Startle Hero awake, almost. Gently, movements shaky and off-kilter, he pulled away from Sunny. Sat him upright on legs that could barely even think to hold his weight. Hero didn't seem to mind. He kept a steadying hand on Sunny's shoulder as the other diligently, more subconsciously than anything, set to mechanically righting all of his skewed bandages. Sunny just let him, unsure what else he was supposed to do. It was taking all he had just to keep his eye focused on Hero's face.

A breath. Two. Three.

Hero finished and set both his hands on Sunny's shoulders. They dwarfed him, fingertips seeping warmth into his back.

"What happened isn't... wasn't okay," He says, more serious than Sunny had ever seen. "I don't–– I'm not sure if it will _ever_ be okay. I-I'll be honest, Sunny, I can... I'm struggling to even look at you right now knowing... knowing that you..." 

His grip on Sunny's shoulders tightened. Sunny winced as nails dug into his skin through the thin gown. Almost immediately, Hero forcibly loosened his grip, though it took several calming breaths to do so. His voice came out again firm, still, almost mechanical. As if more a statement of facts to himself than anything meant for Sunny to hear. "Mari is dead. You killed her, even if you didn't mean to. You were only twelve. It was a _mistake."_

Sunny lowered his head, eye snapping to the floor. It only managed to land on Hero's chest. Hero shook him gently, so much more gently than the first time. It still made Sunny's head throb. He still wouldn't look up. "It was a _mistake,_ Sunny. it was a horrible one. It took Mari away from us. From _all_ of us."

Aubrey's breath hitched behind him. Sunny vaguely caught shuffling fabric, unsteady footsteps, before the never-ending noise was muffled in something.

He finally looked up. Hero's eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Tear tracks made an ugly mess out of his face, leaving his eyelashes still waterlogged. But he held Sunny's eye determinedly.

"It took Mari from all of us. But it took her from _you_ too."

_(I miss her so much.)_

Hero's voice was rough. "You spent all those years just in that house, right? In that same room? The room that used to be––" He swallowed. "It wasn't okay. _None_ of it is okay. You shouldn't have pushed her, no matter how mad you got. You shouldn't have tried to keep it from us. You shouldn't have–– done a lot of things. But you're _rotting away,_ Sunny. You and Basil... Mari is gone. Your _eye_ is gone. Basil almost..."

For a dark moment, Sunny could see it. Basil, squashed like a fruit. Meaty chunks on the semi-solid surface of black space. Eaten alive, bruised flesh barely visible between thousands of tiny crawling legs. His head an almost comforting weight between his hands. Rolling across the floor to his feet from two broken elevator doors. Bloody footprints, juice on his hands, on his clothes, blood on his knife, blood––

"I almost made the–– I-I almost," Aubrey's voice broke the loop, shattering the consuming white-noise. When Hero turned, Sunny could finally make her out. Kel hung tight by her side, one hand kept firm on her shoulder even as hers shakily shoved him away enough to speak. Her eyes were huge and haunted. "I almost did the exact same–– I almost _killed_ Basil. I, I shoved him, he just was making me so–– I just didn't want him near–– _I didn't mean to, I didn't mean––"_

She buried her face in her hands. Kel immediately latched back onto her, surrounding her in as tight and grounding a hug as he could, his mouth set in a grim line. Something about his expression, resigned and afraid, weighed cold in Sunny's stomach. Still, her voice weakly filtered out, a tiny keening wail of "Mari is _dead_ _,_ and Basil only isn't too because I was fucking _lucky...!"_

_Is this what being lucky is supposed to feel like?_

"But he's not dead," Kel finally found his voice, timid as it was. He only seemed to crumple further into himself when his words made Aubrey make a muffled scream into her palms, his expression so frozen, so unnaturally stiff that Sunny could feel Hero tense up against him. "He's––He's alive. Basil didn't..."

 _"Shut up,"_ Aubrey hissed through her teeth, through her hands, as if desperate to not let it escape her. "Just shut up, _shut up,_ that's _exactly_ what’s––" Starting to breathe heavily, she buried her teeth into the meat of her hand. Her other hand clenched in a trembling fist at her side, painted nails pulling hard enough to rip at the seams of her skirt. Kel, somehow even more ghostly pale, didn't try to speak again.

They all went a little off-balance as Hero reached out, nearing letting go of Sunny, and yanked Aubrey down to the ground with them. Kel stumbled with her and almost sent them all into a pile on the floor. Sunny was glad he didn't. He wasn't sure his head could handle any more trauma. Not if he wanted to walk anytime soon, and he _needed_ to. He needed to be able to do this. 

"Aubrey," Hero said, steadying, serious, "You're panicking. You need to breathe with me. Can you do that?" 

A noise croaked out of Aubrey, strangled and hoarse. 

Hero shut his eyes. "I know. I know. Just breathe in. With me, okay? Come on, one, two, three, four..." 

Hero didn't try to take the hand from her mouth. He offered his own and didn't protest when she latched onto it even when her nails dug in so hard he began to bleed. As horrible as it was, Sunny was happy to see his old friends helping each other out. Still there for each other, like they said they would be... Still friends, even after what happened. Even knowing what happened. 

Sunny glanced towards the door. Getting up would be hard, walking even harder. The room was still spinning–– it hadn't stopped even after Hero had stopped hitting him. The edges of his vision were permanently wavering in and out. 

Warmth scooted up and settled against his side. A warm arm hesitantly but firmly slid between his and his side, hooking their elbows loosely together. 

Sunny slowly tilted his head back to find Kel staring at him, eyes searching. In front of them, Hero quietly continued to count, squeezing Aubrey's hand rhythmically as she managed to choke in one, two, three breaths. "Don't," Kel said, almost whispering. Sunny just stared at him. Kel's arm tightened around his. "Please don't go anywhere." 

Deceptively gentle. He couldn't escape Kel's grip even if he tried. Not the way he was now. 

That was fine. There would be all the time in the world, once they vented enough of their own grief to let him be consumed by his. 

The thoughts popped like soap bubbles when a heavy weight threw itself at him, almost sending him right back to the floor all over again. Kel worked like an anchor to keep him upright, keeping them both from having to––

Sharp, stinging pain, unmuffled even by the still heady buzz of painkillers.

Something wet was on his face. Absentmindedly, Sunny touched his cheek, staring blankly down at the splotch of blood on his fingers.

Aubrey's hair closed in on the edges of his world, poisonously bubblegum pink and framing red-rimmed, furious blue eyes. The hand she had hit him with still shook where it had frozen midair, the sluggishly bleeding bite mark smeared across her palm.

"I will never forgive what you did to Mari," She snapped. “Not to Mari, not to us–– we were supposed to be _friends_ and you never said anything to us! You strung her body up like a––!” She heaved in a breath, hands flying to her neck in a vain attempt to comfort herself. “I will _never_ forgive you for that.”

Sunny believed it. He only stared listlessly as Aubrey's face twisted, not unlike the way Hero's had. Her head jerked away from him, icy eyes carefully kept to the floor. "But I–– I get it. I _get_ it, okay? Don't fucking look at me like that."

Sunny blinked. No one met his eye.

The door to the room was abruptly thrown open, knob banging against the wall. Sunny reeled a little as white seemed to flood into the room, progressively blurrier shapes spilling into the small space until he could barely seem to see anything but white. The throbbing pain in his head turned most of the new noise into buzzing nonsense. He could just make out the bright color of Aubrey's hair, the fuzzy image of Hero's face as he was pulled off the floor. The sudden absence of warmth at his side.

Cold hands on his arms. Sunny looked up into the swimming face of an unfamiliar woman. Nurses all around him carefully pulled him onto his feet, several of them making rushed conversation when his legs refused to hold him.

(Too much hope for the rooftop, then.)

"––to your room, okay?" She was saying. He couldn't hear the voices of his friends. Just a lot of noise. "You've been off your IV, dear, and your body desperately needs those fluids. We're going to take you back to your bed. Your friends can even come–– later. Right now, they need to go home, and you need to come with me. Do you understand? Can you nod for me?"

Sunny only blinked up at her. The words made sense, but together they just jumbled and danced in his skull until he felt like they were leaking out of his ears.

His cheek stung, his head throbbed. His side felt cold.

The hands on him jostled him. The woman in front of him furrowed her brow. Her mouth moved, but none of it made any sense to him. What was going on? What had he been doing? His head hurt. Someone–– several people were yelling. Their voices bounced around the room, loud and distressed, and none of it seemed to make it past his ears into his brain.

Suddenly some of the hands peeled away. Sunny breathed in sharply, world tilting dangerously with the effort of it, as something–– someone more familiar took their place.

Warmth settled in along both his sides. Kel's arm hooked around his. Aubrey's shoulder pressed tightly back against his even as her eyes remained to the ground, refusing to meet his. Hero's back was a faintly familiar wall in front of him, even hunched and tense as it was. 

The noise died down. White shuffled and flowed around them, clucking nervously as they hovered over him, his old maybe-friends, the blood on the floor, the speeding beeping behind them.

Sunny looked back, eye straining to see.

Behind them, surrounded by faceless nurses and noisy buzzing machines, Basil blinked bruised eyes open.

They met Sunny's, across the room. Hazy, dazed, pained, confused.

Sunny felt tears prick his eye. He felt exhausted with them, but this was new. This was necessary.

The hands pulled him out of the room, away from the rooftop, and Sunny smiled at his friend.

Basil smiled back, and the door shut between them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not satisfied with how so many fics about the ending include sunny being immediately forgiven. Like yes he was 12, yes it was an accident, but that can't erase that it happened. If I were Hero i would have felt like scrubbing my skin off my arms for having hugged sunny earlier in the game knowing he killed the person i loved, accident or not. 
> 
> Come find me at [Leviathiane](https://leviathiane.tumblr.com) on tumblr!


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